The Process:
Being self taught, there was a learning curve to figuring out how to make comics. It's the marriage of quality artwork, and proper use of space and dialogue to create a cinematic experience that draws in the audience. After several years of trial, error, and LOTS of practice, I landed on a sequential process to create the sequential art of Feral Instincts!
01
Blocking:
After the script has been written that describes the mood, dialogue, and substance for each panel in each page that makes up the volume, the next step is to decide how the page will be laid out, and where the dialogue will fit, I've found that this ensures an easy to read and understandable page design.
02
Sketching:
After the page layout and dialogue is established, I usually upload some images of sketch figurines in various positions, to get an idea of how much room I have for the artwork, from here I begin to sketch out the characters and backgrounds.
03
Inking
Once the sketch layer is finished, I use a separate layer to create the finalized ink. All of the rough edges and scribbly lines are traced over, leaving behind the smooth finished lines that give the image its bold, stylized appearance.
04
Shading
Finally, I create a layer under the ink layer that I use to shade the images. Volume one was a bit more experimental in regards to the shading techniques, since I was figuring out how I wanted it to look, and was also figuring out how to use Procreate, the software I have been working with thus far to create the series, but now having done a decent bit of work on volume 2, I have become more comfortable with the traditional manga style of shading.
EARLY CONCEPT
ARTWORK
I originally got the idea to make this series when I was 16 years old, back in 2015. At the time I was just beginning to teach myself how to do sequential artwork. I drew the very first page, labeled “Feral Instincts”, and instantly liked the idea of making a series about a suave fox agent… only after several years of development did the story start to take shape into what it is now!
(Thanks Josh and Rachel Sullivan, and Caleb Collings for being my muses in this process!)
Earliest Art:
I started by creating several (not-so-sequential) comic pages... hey, It's a start!
CHARACTER DESIGN:
On a broader scale, I wanted to design each character in such a way to make them unique, while making it easy for the audience to clearly tell what animal each character is. The majority my process for designing characters was accomplished through years of developing Keegan's design (He's the main character of the story by the way), and once I started to get a better Idea on how he would be drawn, some of the important aspects of showing his expression were implemented into my process for designing other characters. I have much more I would love to show, but unfortunately, the rest is confidential until certain characters have debuted in the series. (Mwahaha!)
